On the same day that the Yankees signed Japanese superstar pitcher Masahiro Tanaka, the Mets came to terms with Lucas Duda. This came right after the Phillies brought back Bobby Abreu.

I’m sure there’s a bad joke in there somewhere, but if you’re a fan of the local National League teams, you’re not laughing. While one area team was possibly moving back into playoff contention, the other two were living in their past (Abreu), while the third was quick to secure a not-quite first baseman/not-quite right fielder (Duda).

Talk about difference in philosophies, not that the Phillies have anything to lose in bringing back Abreu, while Duda could still morph into a decent player. But after a monster winter during which they landed a potential all-star center fielder (Jacoby Ellsbury), all-star catcher (Brian McCann) and veteran hitter who has for the most part been a postseason standout (Carlos Beltran), the Yanks put the icing on the cake with Tanaka, potentially propelling themselves back atop the loaded American League East.

It was perhaps their biggest free-agent pitching signing since Catfish Hunter (and no we haven’t forgotten all those great pitchers they have added since), which is ironic in that they will have to adopt the complete opposite approach to how they handled Hunter.

Rewind to the Summer of 1975, a year before the Yankees would end their 12-year postseason drought. In his first season in the Bronx, Hunter (acquired via free agency the previous winter after a contract dispute with the World Champion Oakland A’s) is giving the team its money’s worth and is still one of the best pitchers in baseball. But the Yankees make a managerial change, ousting Bill Virdon in favor of Billy Martin.

Martin, as we would learn later in Oakland, didn’t believe in bullpens unless absolutely necessary. Hunter was a workhorse. It’s a bad long-term combination. Despite only briefly being on the fringe of the AL East race, Martin runs Hunter in the ground, sending him out for 113 innings over 44 days (a heavy workload in any era). In 1976, as the Yankees regain their position atop the league, he then tosses another 298 innings.

The Yankees' handling of pitcher Catfish Hunter should pose as a cautionary tale about overusing prized pitchers.Associated Press

By late 1977, Hunter’s arm is shot (pretty much permanently), which is a fate the Yankees must be careful to avoid with Tanaka, whose biggest red flag coming to Major League Baseball is early overuse.

While the talent has to thrill you, the workload must be carefully examined, lest this special talent not even make it to the end of the seven-year, $155 million deal. Having amassed 1,315 innings by the end of his Year 24 season, Tanaka has already well exceeded the workload of every other current big-league pitcher by that age.

Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci noted that the last big-league pitcher to log that many innings by that age was Frank Tanana, who was a budding superstar in 1978, when he hurt his arm ... and never made another all-star team thereafter.

Before pitching professionally? Tanaka’s high-school workload was equally scary as Verducci notes that he threw 742 pitches in five games in Japan’s national tournament.
A bad investment? Perhaps. But the good news if you’re the Yankees is that you already have a model to protect such talent (even if it was inadvertent) in your glorious past, and that’s the six-man rotation.

Think of it this way: Would you rather have two or three spectacular Tanaka seasons and then burnout or seven very good seasons? At the very least, the club should consider skipping an occasional start or pushing his day back to limit workload.

The next-best way to protect him, ironically, is to spend more through forging a deeper bullpen. You keep David Robertson as the best eighth-inning pitcher in the league and invest in a strong closer. And you make sure of two things: you don’t burn out this incredible arm by late in the season and make sure he is just as valuable in the final two seasons of this deal as the first two.

Yankees manager Joe Girardi (pictured) will have to be smart in his usage of Masahiro Tanaka.John Munson/Star-Ledger

It will be an overwhelming temptation for manager Joe Girardi and the entire Yankees organization as the buzz Tanaka could create could be like that of Fernandomania (when Fernando Valenzuela lit up the league with the Dodgers) or Dwight Gooden’s second season (with the Mets in 1985). He could boost ticket sales substantially and further solidify the Yankee brand in Asia.

But Hunter and the Oakland pitchers of the early 1980s stand as the cautionary tale as to what can happen when you don’t protect such a precious resource, when you forfeit the future for just a little bit of extra glory today. Do that, and five years down the road the Yankees too could find themselves dwelling more in the land of the Abreus and Dudas than in players like Tanaka, who present so many positive possibilities.